Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
The riches such as they are for today's Times amount to £1.88 – the total value of a set of the new look coins featured on its front page. Over at the Daily Telegraph there's consternation that Old Ma Britannia is missing from the new designs. "Surely," says Richard Falkiner, numismatic correspondent for the Antiques Trade Gazette – a title not exactly synonymous with neophilia – "all true Brits will weep."
But anyone who took this elbowing of Britannia, who first appeared on British coins 300 years ago, to be part of a wider conspiracy against more senior figures in society, will be heartened by the column inches afforded to those near contemporaries of the mythical Roman goddess – the Rolling Stones.
The Daily Mail pictures Bacchus' living embodiment, alongside bandmates Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood and Mick Jagger, and tells us that the group are all "millionaires many, many times over". Sigh, if only purveyors of succinct news copy could call on the infinitely flexible English language to supply a single word for someone who is a millionaire multiple times.
The excuse for this Stones appearance is the premiere of the band's new film, Shine a Light. (Point of order – can some critic somewhere publicly acknowledge that the little-commented–on Stones track which lends its name to this movie is probably the band's finest four minutes on record.)
Which segues neatly – although recognising this fact somewhat undermines its seamlessness – to the Sun's big lesson of the day: "How to shine your shoes"… in eight easy-to-follow, er, steps. Apparently we've all forgotten.